It's clear that you can be prosecuted for the things you do.
But can you be prosecuted for something you fail to do as well?
Common law recognizes that, in most instances, mere failure to report a crime isn't a crime in itself. However, there are some notable exceptions.
While in the majority of cases failure to report is not illegal, there are laws which have been enacted punishing individuals who fail to report certain types of crimes to the authorities.
Such laws are found within the penal code governing local or state-wide jurisdictions.
While merely failing to report a crime is one thing, helping to conceal a crime is quite another.
A person can generally be charged with accessory after the fact, or aiding and abetting, if he or she wasn't actually present during the commission of a crime, but took actions to conceal the crime or help the perpetrators avoid capture.
Depending on the severity of the underlying crime, aiding and abetting can be either a misdemeanor or a felony in most jurisdictions.
Which brings me to a consideration of the many state laws which have been enacted in the wake of the hysteria which has attended allegations of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic Clerics. Many states have passes mandatory reporting laws requiring certain types of people to report crimes against children.
These "mandatory reporters" generally include parents, teachers, school administrators, Clergy, medical professionals, therapists, social workers, and others.
In some jurisdictions, any person who believes child abuse is taking place must report it.
Under these statutes, once a mandatory reporter witnesses an act of abuse or finds evidence of child abuse, he or she has a duty to report the incident to the appropriate authorities.
That usually includes sharing important details about the incident, like the names of the victim and perpetrator.
Failure to report an incidence of child abuse is a misdemeanor offense in most jurisdictions.
Which brings me to consideration of the recent guilty sentence leveled upon Archbishop Philip Wilson, the highest-ranking Catholic official to have been found guilty of concealing sexual crimes against children.
The Archbishop of Adelaide, Australia, was sentenced a month after being found guilty of failing to report child sexual abuse. Archbishop Wilson is expected to serve his sentence under home detention.
He was convicted of covering up abuse by a Priest, Father Jim Fletcher, in the state of New South Wales in the 1970s, almost a half-century ago.
Never-mind that there were no penal laws extant in the 1970s requiring the mandatory reporting of the sexual abuse of minors, the Archbishop is guilty now.
Never mind that a law that makes illegal an act that was legal when committed, increases the penalties for an infraction after it has been committed, or changes the rules of evidence to make conviction easier is prohibited in Autstralia and most other Common Law countries, the Archbishop is guilty today.
What explains this terrible injustice which has been visited upon Archbishop Wilson?
Two factors, in my opinion.
First, there is no question that we are witnessing today the same hysteria witnessed in the infamous Salem witch trials which occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil’s magic—and 20 were executed.
Eventually, common sense and common decency returned to the colony which admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted.
Still, the trials stand as stark witness that societies can become so infected by paranoia that a mob-mentality supercedes justice and innocent people are swept up in the hysteria to become victims of horrific injustice themselves.
Second, the Catholic Church, for all of its history, has been a target, the subject of cruel persecution at the hands of those who would silence its voice.
In most cases, attacks perpetrated against the Church were based upon false allegations or accusations of bias, hypocrisy or intolerance.
But now, enemies of the Church have hit upon crimes proven to have been committed by Clerics against minors.
These enemies have used the fact of these crimes to swell their ranks and stirred the fires anti-Catholic discrimination into a frenzied hysteria that has reached the halls of legislatures and politicians eager and willing to enact laws clearly in contradiction to the principles of Common Law in their zeal to destabilize and destroy the Church.
When Archbishop Wilson became aware of Father Fletcher’s abuse, then-Father Wilson was in his first year of Priesthood. He said nothing about what he was told by alleged-victims and, in one case, by a parent.
The very idea that a Priest would abuse a child was so far beyond the scope of belief, then-Father Wilson was most totally perplexed about what he should do.
With no evidence other than the allegation of the child and parent, should he risk ruining the reputation of a brother-Priest? Should he report such an allegation to his Pastor or Bishop?
There were no guidelines, no laws, to provide then-Father Wilson with some direction in which he should proceed.
So, he kept silent.
Now, almost a half-century later, society renders judgment and finds this man, this Archbishop, guilty of a crime against mandatory reporting laws that never existed when then-Father Wilson became aware of these allegations.
This is a terrible miscarriage of justice.
Decent human beings will recognize that the lessons of the Salem witch trials have been forgotten and the same injustices are being visited upon innocent people on account of the same paranoia and hysteria which gripped the early-American colony.
Shame on Australia, its government and people for allowing this travesty of justice to prevail.
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